Miles and Points and Holiday Gifts

It is the holiday season and the time when most of us spend a lot of money on gifts for our friends and loved ones.

I personally prefer shopping online because you can earn miles and points or cash back through shopping portals. I wrote about some of my favorite on the blog previously. Holiday Shopping via Cash Portals.

Sometimes though you have to shop in person. For those circumstances, I try to pay with a miles and point credit card whenever possible. There are some exceptions though. One notable one being Target where I use a Redcard, which is a debit card for Target. When I use that card, I get 5% discount on the entire purchase. That cash back amount generally is better then the miles and points that you earn from a credit card.

This weekend I had to do some holiday shopping. One of the locations was a store where I had to return a previously purchased item because of a duplicate item.

I originally ordered the item online and received cash back from the portal; however, I had to return the item and exchange it for another at the store.

When that happens, the cash back transaction is voided even if I make an exchange as the new item was not purchased via the portal. This is a little annoying but it is difficult to get around if you are on a short time frame.

The best thing to do would be to try to return the item to the store and then buy the replacement item online via the shopping portal. For stores that allow in store pickup, that would be the best scenario. You could buy the new item before you go to the store and then return the old item at the same time. You would lose the cash back from the return but it would be picked up by the new sale.

I was at a store that didn’t offer immediate pickup options, so I returned the item and bought a replacement one at the store, thus loosing out in the cash back. But the best thing is I still earned points on the new transaction because I paid with a miles and points card.

I am not a big fan of shopping in stores or going to malls during the holiday season. But sometimes that is inevitable. Fortunately, the majority of shopping can be done online these days giving multiple opportunities for earning miles and points.